WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE TRACTS. NO. 3. 


SUFFRAGE 

FOR WOMEN. 


SPEECH BY 

/ 

JOHN STUART MILL, 

IN THE 

BRITISH PARLIAMENT, MAY 20, 1867. 







JF *51 
A 5 3 


BOSTON: 

FOR SALE BY C. K. WHIPPLE, 43 BOWDOIN STREET. 

1869. 




WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE TRACTS. 


No. I. Henry Ward Beecher: Address at the Cooper Institute, New 
York, Feb. 2, 1860. 

No. 2. George William Curtis: Speech in the New York Constitu¬ 
tional Convention, July 19, 1867. 

No. 3. John Stuart Mill: Speech in the British Parliament, May 20, 
1867. 

No. 4. Thomas Wentworth Higginson : "Ought Women to Learn 
the Alphabet?” From "The Atlantic Monthly,” February, 
1859. 

No. 5. Samuel E. Sewall: "The Legal Condition of Women *.:■ 
Massachusetts. 

For sale by C. K. WHIPPLE , 43 Bowdoin Street , Boston. 

Price , 5 cents , singly; $4 per hundred. 

ggr=* Single copies will be sent by mail on receipt of the price and 

postage ; or three for 20 cents , free of postage. 



THE NEW. ENGLAND 


P P 






$ 


CONSTITUTION. 

1. Believing in the natural equality of the two sexes, and 
that women ought to enjoy the same legal rights and priv¬ 
ileges as men; that as long as women are denied the elec¬ 
tive franchise they suffer a great wrong, and society a deep 
and incalculable injury; the undersigned agree to unite in 
an Association to be called, — “The New England 
Woman’s Suffrage Association.” 

2. The object of this Association shall be to procure the 
right of suffrage for women, and to effect such changes in 
the law as shall place wony°n in all respects on an equal 
legal footing with men. 

3. The officers of the Society shall be a President, Vice 
Presidents, a Treasurer, a Corresponding and a Recording 
Secretary, and an Executive Committee of not exceeding 
fifteen persons, besides the President, Secretaries and 
Treasurer, who shall be members ex officio. All the 
officers shall be chosen at the annual meeting, to continue 










in office for one 3ear, and until others are chosen in their 
places. v 

4. Any person may be a member of the Association, by 
the payment of an annual contribution to its funds, or a 
life member by the payment of Twenty Dollars. 

5. The President shall preside at all meetings of the 
Society, or in his or her absence the senior Vice President 

6. The Treasurer shall collect and take charge of the 
funds, make all payments, and keep regular accounts, to 
be audited by the Executive Committee. 

7. The Recording Secretary shall keep the records; 
and the Corresponding Secretary shall conduct the corres- 

> pondence of the Association. 

8. The Executive Committee shall manage the business 
of the Association, may elect honorary members, call 
meetings of the Society, prepare petitions to the legisla¬ 
ture, issue publications, and employ lecturers and agents, 
and take any measures they think fit to forward the objects 
'•‘f the Association, and may fill all vacancies that occur 
prior to the annual meeting. 

9. The annual meeting of the Association shall be held 
on such daj in the last week in May, in Boston, and at 
such hour and place, and be called in such manner, as the 
Executive Committee may appo'nt 


SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN. 


I rise, sir, to propose an extension of the suffrage which 
can excite no party or class feeling in the house — which can 
give no umbrage to the keenest assertor of the claims either 
of property or of numbers; an extension which has not the 
faintest tendency to disturb, what we have heard so much about 
lately, the balance of political power; which cannot afflict the most 
timid alarmist by any revolutionary terrors, or offend the most 
jealous democrat as an infringement of popular rights, or a privi¬ 
lege granted to one class of society at the expense of another. 
There is nothing to distract our minds from the simple consideration 
whether there is any reasonable ground for excluding an entire half 
of the nation, not only from actual admission, but from the very 
possibility of being admitted within the pale of citizenship, though 
they may fulfil every one of the conditions legally and constitu¬ 
tionally sufficient in all cases but theirs. This is, under the 
laws of our country, a solitary case. There is no other ex¬ 
ample of an exclusion which is absolute. If it were, the law 
that none should have a vote but the possessors of £ 5,000 a year, 
the poorest man in the community might, and now and then would, 
attain to the privilege. But neither birth, nor merit, nor exertion, 
nor intellect, nor fortune, nor even that great disposer of human 
affairs — accident, can enable any woman to have her voice counted 
in those common concerns which touch her and hers as nearly as 
any other person in the nation. 

Now, sir, before going any farther, permit me to say that a 
prima facie case is already made out. It is not just to make dis¬ 
tinctions, in rights and privileges, between one of fler Majesty’s 
subjects and another, unless for a positive reason, I do not mean 
that the suffrage, or any other political function, is an abstract right, 
or that to withhold it from any one, on sufficient grounds of expo* 
3 



4 


SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN. 


diency, is a personal wrong; ifc is an utter misunderstanding of 
the principle I maintain to confound this with it; my whole argu¬ 
ment is one of expediency. But all expediencies are not on 
exactly the same level. There is a kind of expediency which is 
called justice ; and justice, though it does not necessarily demand 
that we should bestow political rights on every one, does demand 
that we should not capriciously and without cause give those lights 
to one, and withhold them from another. As was most justly said 
by my right, honorable friend, the member for South Lancashire, 
in the most misunderstood and misrepresented speech that I ever 
remember, to lay a ground for the denial of the franchise to any 
one, it is necessary to allege either personal unfitness or public dan¬ 
ger. Can either of these be asserted in the present case ? Can it 
be pretended that women who manage a property or conduct a 
business, who pay rates and taxes, often to a large amount, and 
often from their own earnings, many of whom are responsible heads 
of families, and some of whom, in the capacity of schoolmistresses, 
teach more than a great many of the male electors have ever learnt, 
are not capable of a function of which every male householder is 
capable? Or is it supposed that, if they were allowed to vote, 
they would revolutionize the State, subvert any of our valuable 
institutions, or that we should have worse laws, or be, in any single 
respect, worse governed by means of their suffrage? [Hear, 
hear.] 

No one thinks any thing of the kind; and it is not only the 
general principles of justice that are infringed, or at any rate set 
aside, by excluding women, merely as women, from the election of 
representatives. That exclusion is repugnant to the particular 
principles of the British Constitution. It violates the oldest of 
our constitutional axioms — a principle dear to all reformers, and 
theoretically acknowledged by conservatives — that taxation and 
. e presentation should be co-extensive ; that the taxes should be 

ted by those who pay them. Do not women pay taxes? Does 
nov every woman who is sui juris pay exactly the same as a man 
who has the same electoral qualifications? If having a stake in 
the country means any thing, the owner of freehold or leasehold 
property has the same stake, whether it is owned by a man or r. 
woman. 

There is evidence in our constitutional records that women have 
voted in counties and in some boroughs at former, though cer¬ 
tainly distant, periods of history. But the house will expect that 1 
should not rest my case on general principles, either of justice or 
of the Constitution, but should produce what are called practical 


SPEECH BY JOHN STUART MILL. 


5 


arguments. Now I frankly admit that one very serious practical 
argument is entirely wanting in the case of women : they do not 
hold great meetings in Hyde Park — [laughter] — nor demonstra¬ 
tions at Islington. 

IIow far this omission may be considered to invalidate their 
claims, I will not pretend to say. Put other practical arguments 
— practical even in the most restricted sense of the term — are 
not wanting; and I am ready to state them if I may first be 
allowed to ask, Where are the practical objections? In general, 
lie difficulty which people feel on this subject is not a practical 
objection ; there is nothing practical in it; it is a mere feeling — a 
fueling of strangeness. The idea is so very new; at least they 
think so, though that is a mistake: it is a very old idea. Well, 
sir, strangeness is a thing which wears off. Some things were 
strange enough to many of us three months ago which are not at 
all so now; and many which are strange now will not be strange 
to the same person a few years hence, not to say a few months; 
and, as for novelty, we live in a world of novelties. 

The despotism of custom is on the wane : we are not now con¬ 
tent fc> know that things are: we ask whether they ought to be ; 
and in this house, I am bound to suppose that an appeal lies from 
custom to a higher tribunal, in which reason is judge. Now, the 
reasons which custom is in the habit of giving for itself on this 
subject are very brief: that, indeed, .is one of my difficulties. It 
is not easy to refute an interjection. Interjections, however, are 
the only arguments among those we usually hear on this subject 
which it appears to me at all difficult to refute. 

The others chiefly consist of such aphorisms as these: Politics 
is not women’s business, and would make them neglect their proper 
duties. Women do not desire the suffrage, and would rather not 
have it. Women are sufficiently represented through their male 
relatives. Women have power enough already. I shall perhaps 
be thought to have done enough in the way of answering, when I 
have answered all these : it may perhaps instigate any honorable 
gentleman who takes the trouble of replying to me, to produce 
something more recondite. [Hear.] 

Politics, it is said, is not a woman’s business. Well, sir, I am 
not aware that politics is a man’s business either, unless he is one 
of the few who is paid for devoting his time to the public service, 
or is a member of this or of the other house. The great majority 
of male voters have their own business, which engrosses nearly the 
whole of their time; but I have never heard that the hours occu¬ 
pied in attending, once in a few years, at a polling booth, even if 


6 


SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN. 


we throw in the time spent in reading newspapers and political 
treatises, has hitherto made them neglect their shops or their count¬ 
ing-houses. I have not heard that those who have votes are worse 
merchants, or worse lawyers, or worse physicians, or even worse 
clergymen, than other people. One would think that the British 
Constitution allowed no man to vote who was not able to give up 
the greater part of his time to politics; if that were the case, we 
should have a very limited constituency. 

But let me ask, what is the meaning of political freedom? Is it 
not the control of those who do make a business of politics by those 
who do not ? It is the very principle of constitutional liberty that 
men come from their looms and their forges to decide — and de¬ 
cide well — whether they are properly governed, and whom they 
will be governed by; and the nations who prize this privilege, and 
who exercise it fully, are invariably those who excel most in the 
common affairs of life. 

The occupations of most women are, and are likely to remain, 
principally domestic; but the idea that those occupations are in¬ 
compatible wi ll taking an interest in national affairs, or in any of 
the great concerns of humanity, is as futile as the terror once 
sincerely entertained, lest artisans should desert the workshop and 
the factory if they were taught to read. 

I know there is an obscure feeling, a feeling which is ashamed to 
express itself openly, that women have no right to care about any 
thing but how they may be the most useful and devoted servants of 
some man. But as I am convinced that there is not one member 
of this house whose conscience accuses him of any such mean feeling, 
I may say that the claim to confiscate the whole existence of half the 
human species for the convenience of the other half, seems to me, 
independently of its injustice, particularly silly. For who that has 
had ordinary experience of human life, and ordinary capacity for 
profiting by that experience, fancies that those do their own business 
best who understand nothing else ? A man has lived to little pur¬ 
pose who has not learned that without general mental cultivation no 
particular work that requires understanding can be done in the best 
manner. It requires brains to use practical experience; and 
brains, even without practical experience, go further than any 
amount of practical experience without brains. 

But perhaps it is thought that the ordinary occupations of women 
are more antagonistic than men’s occupations are to any comprehen¬ 
sion of public affairs. Perhaps it is thought that those who are 
principally charged with the moral education of the future genera¬ 
tions of men must be quite unfit to judge of the moral and educa- 


SPEECH BY JOHN STUART MILL . 


7 


tional interest of a community; or that those whose chi »f daily 
business is the judicious laying-out of money so as to produce the 
greatest results with the smallest means, could not give any lessons 
to right honorable gentlemen on that side of the house, cr on this, 
who produce such singularly small results with such vast means. 
[Laughter.] 

I feel a degree of confidence, sir, on this subject, which I could 
not feel if the political change, in itself not a great or formidable 
one, for which I contend, were not grounded, as beneficent and 
salutary political changes usually are, upon a previous social change. 
The idea of a peremptory and absolute line of separation between 
men’s province of thought and women’s-—the notion of forbidding 
women to take interest in what interests men — belongs to a gone-by 
state of society which is receding farther and farther into the past. 
We think and talk about the political revolutions of the world, but 
we do not pay sufficient attention to the fact that there has taken 
place among us a silent domestic revolution : women and men are, 
for the first time in history, really companions. Our traditions 
about the proper relations between them have descended to us from 
a time when their lives were apart— when they were separate in 
their thoughts because they were separate both in their amusements 
and in their serious occupations. The man spent his hours of 
leisure among men : all his friendships, all his real intimacies were 
with men : with men alone,did he converse on any serious subject: 
the wife was either a plaything or an upper servant. All this 
among the educated classes is changed: men no longer give up 
their spare time to violent out-door exercise and boisterous con¬ 
viviality with male associates : the home has acquired the ascenden¬ 
cy : the two sexes now really pass their lives together : the women 
of the family are the man’s habitual society : the wife is his chief 
associate, his most confidential friend, and often his most trusted 
counsellor. [Cheers.] 

Now, does any man wish to have for his nearest companion, 
linked so closely with himself, and whose wishes and preferences 
have so strong a claim upon him, one whose thoughts are alien from 
those which occupy his own mind — one who can give neither help 
nor comfort nor support to his noblest feelings and purposes : 
[Hear, hear.] Is this close and almost exclusive companionship 
compatible with women being warned off all large subjects — 
taught that they ought not to care about what it is the man’s duty to 
care for, and that to take part in any serious interests outside the 
household is stepping beyond their province? Is it good for a man 
to pass his life in close communion of thought and feeling with a 


8 


SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN. 


person studiously kept inferior to himself, whose earthly interests are 
forcibly confined within four walls, who is taught to cultivate as a 
grace of character ignorance and indifference about the most inspir¬ 
ing subjects, those among which his highest duties are cast ? [Hear, 
hear ] Does any one suppose that this can happen without detri¬ 
ment to the man’s own character? \ 

Sir, the time has come when, if women are not raised to the level 
of men, men will be pulled down to theirs. [A laugh.] The 
women of a man’s family are either a stimulus and a support to his 
higher aspirations, or -s drag upon them. You may keep them 
ignorant of politics, but you cannot keep them from concerning 
themselves with the least respectable part oT politics — its person¬ 
alities^ If they do not understand, and cannot enter into the man’s 
feelings of public duty, they do care about his private interests, and 
that is the scale into which their weight is certain to be thrown. 
They are an influence always at hand, co-operating with his selfish 
promptings, watching and taking advantage of every moment of 
moral irresolution, and doubling the strength of every temptation. 
Even if they maintain a modest neutrality, their mere absence of 
sympathy hangs a dead weight upon his moral energies, and makes 
him averse to incur sacrifices which they will feel, and to forego 
wordly successes and advantages in which they would share, for the 
sake of objects which they cannot appreciate. But suppose him to 
be happily preserved from temptation to an actual sacrifice of con¬ 
science, the insensible influence on the higher parts of his own 
nature is still deplorable. Under an idle notion that the beauties 
of character of the two sexes are mutually incompatible, men are 
afraid of manly women [a laugh]; but those who have reflected on 
the nature and power of social influences, know that, when there are 
not manly women, there will not much longer be manly men. 
[Laughter.] When men and women are really companions, if 
women are frivolous, men will be frivolous; if women care only for 
personal interests and trifling amusements, men in general will care 
for little else. The two sexes must now rise or sink together. 

It may be said that women can take interest in great national ques¬ 
tions without having a vote. They can, certainly ; but how many of 
them will ? All that society and education can do is exhausted in 
inculcating on women that the rule of their conduct ought to be what 
society expects from them, and the denial of the vote is a proclama¬ 
tion, intelligible to every one, that society does not expect them to 
concern themselves with public interests. Why, the whole of a 
girl’s thoughts and feelings are toned down by it from her earliest 
school-days; she does not take the interest, even in national history, 


SPEECH BY JOHN STUART MILL. 


9 


that a boy does, because it is to be no business of hers when she 
grows up. If there are women, and fortunately there now are, who 
do care about these subjects, and study them, it is because the force 
within is powerful enough to bear up against the worst kind of dis¬ 
couragement, that which acts not by interposing obstacles which may 
be struggled aga’nst, but by deadening the spirit which faces anjj 
conquers obstacles. 

We are told that women do not wish for the suffrage. If this be 
so, it only proves that nearly all women are still under this deaden¬ 
ing influence, that the opiate still benumbs their mind and con¬ 
science. But there are many women who do desire the suffrage, and 
have claimed it by petitions to this house. How do we know how 
many more thousands there are who have not asked for what they 
do not hope to get, either for fear of being ill thought of by men 
or by other women, or from the feeling so sedulously cultivated by 
the whole of their education — aversion to make themselves con¬ 
spicuous. 

Men must have a great faculty of self-delusion if they suppose 
that leading questions put to the ladies of their families, or of 
their acquaintance, will elicit their real sentiments, or will be an¬ 
swered with entire sincerity by one woman in ten thousaud. No 
one is so well schooled as most women are in making a virtue of 
necessity. It costs little to disclaim caring for what is not offered; 
and frankness in expressing feelings that may be disagreeable or 
unflattering to their nearest connections is not one of the virtues 
which a woman’s education tends to cultivate. It is, moreover, a 
virtue attended with sufficient risk to induce prudent women to re¬ 
serve its exercise for cases in which there is some nearer interest to 
be promoted by it. 

At all events, those who do not care for the suffrage will not use 
it. Either they will not register, or if they do, they will vote as 
their male relatives advise them, by which, as the advantage would 
probably be about equally shared among all classes, no harm would 
be done. Those, whether they be few or many, who do value the 
privilege, would exercise it, and would experience that stimulus to 
their faculties, and that widening and liberalizing influence on their 
feelings and sympathies, which the suffrage seldom fails to exert over 
every class that is admitted to a share in it. Meanwhile, an un¬ 
worthy stigma would have been taken off the whole sex, the law 
would have ceased to stamp them as incapable of serious things, 
would have ceased to proclaim that their opinions and wishes do not 
deserve to have any influence in things which concern them equally 
with men, and in many that concern them much more than men. 


10 


SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN. 


They would no longer be classed with children, idiots, and lunatics 
— [laughter and cheers]—as incapable of taking care either of 
themselves or others, and needing that every thing should be done for 
them without asking for their consent. If no more than one woman 
in twenty thousand used the vote, it would be a gain to all women 
$o be declared capable of using it. Even so purely theoretical an 
enfranchisement would remove an artificial u eight from the expan¬ 
sion of their faculties, the real evil of which is far greater than the 
apparent. 

Then, it is said that women do not need direct political power, 
because they have so much indirect through the influence they pos¬ 
sess over their male relatives and connections. [Laughter.] Sir, 
I should like to try this argument in other cases. Rich people have 
a great deal of indirect influence. Is this a reason for denying 
them a vote? [Cheers.] Did any one ever propose a rating quali¬ 
fication the wrong way, and bring in a reform bill to disfranchise 
everybody who lives in a £500 house, or pays £100 a year in direct 
taxes? [Hear, hear.] Unless this rule for distributing the fran¬ 
chise is to be reserved for the exclusive benefit of women, the 
legitimate consequence of it would be that persons above a certain 
amount of fortune should be allowed to bribe, but should not be 
allowed to vote. [Laughter.] 

Sir, it is true that women have already great power. It is part 
of my case that they have great power. But they have it under 
the worst possible conditions, because it is indirect, and, therefore, 
irresponsible. [Hear, hear.] I want to make that power a respon¬ 
sible power. [Hear, hear.] I want to make the woman feel her 
conscience interested in its honest exercise. I want to make her 
feel that it is not given to her as a mere means of personal ascenden¬ 
cy. I want to make her influence work by a manly interchange of 
opinions, and not by cajolery. [Laughter and cheers.] I want to 
awaken in her the political point of honor. At present many a 
woman greatly influences the political conduct of her male connec¬ 
tions, sometimes by force of will actually governs it; but she is 
never supposed to have any thing to do with it. The man she in¬ 
fluences, and perhaps misleads, is alone responsible. Her power is 
like the back-stairs influence of a favorite. The poor creature is 
nobody, and all is referred to the man’s superior wisdom; and as, 
of course, he will not give way to her if he ought not, she may 
work upon him through all his strongest feelings without incurring 
any responsibility. Sir, I demand that all who exercise power 
should have the burden laid upon them of knowing something 
about the things they have power over. With the admitted right 
to a voice would come a sense of the corresponding duty. 


SPEECH BY JOHN STUART MILL. 


11 


A woman is not generally inferior in tenderness of conscience to 
a man. Make her a moral agent in matters of public conduct. 
Show that you require from her a political conscience, and when she 
has learnt to understand the transcendent importance of these things, 
she will see why it is wrong to sacrifice political convictions for per¬ 
sonal interest and vanity ; she will understand that political honesty 
is not a foolish personal crotchet, which a man is bound for the sake 
of his family to give up, but a serious duty; and the men whom 
she can influence will be better men in all public relations, and not, 
as they often are at present, worse men by the whole effect of her 
influence. [Hear, hear.] 

But, at all events, it will be said women, as women, do not suffer 
any practical inconvenience by not being represented. The interests 
of all women are safe in the hands of their fathers, husbands, and 
brothers, whose interest is the same with theirs, and who, besides 
knowing better than they do what is good for them, care a good 
deal more for them than'they care for themselves. 

Sir, this is exactly what has been said of all other unrepresented 
classes — the operatives, for instance; are they not all virtually 
represented through their employers? are not the interests of the 
employer and that of the employed, when properly understood, the 
same ? To insinuate the contrary, is it not the horrible crime of 
setting class against class ? Is not the farmer interested along with 
his laborer in the prosperity of agriculture ? Has not the cotton 
manufacturer as great an interest in the high price of calicoes as his 
workmen? Is not the employer interested as well as his men in 
the repeal of taxes ? Have not employer and employed a common 
interest against outsiders, just as man and wife have against all 
outside the family ? And are not all employers kind, benevolent, 
charitable men, who love their work-people, and always know and 
do what is most for their good ? Every one of these assertions is 
exactly is true as the parallel assertion respecting men and women. 
Sir, we are not living in Arcadia, but, as we were lately reminded, 
in fcece Romuli / and in that region workmen need other pro¬ 
tection than that of their masters, and women than that of their 
men. 

I should like to see a return laid before the house of the number 
of women who are annually beaten to death, kicked to death, or 
trodden to death, by their male protectors. [Hear, hear.] I should 
like this document to contain, in an opposite column, a return of 
the sentences passed in those cases in which the dastardly criminal 
did not get off altogether; and in a third column a comparative view 
of the amount of property, the unlawful taking of which had, in 


12 


SUFFRAGE FOR WOMR^. 


the same sessions or assizes, by the same judge, been thought worthy 
of the same degree of punishment. [Cheers.] We should thus 
obtain an arithmetical estimate of the value set by a male legislature 
and male tribunals upon the murder of a woman by habitual tor¬ 
ture, often prolonged for years, which, if there be any shame in us, 
would make us hang our heads. [Cheers.] 

Sir, before it is contended that women do not suffer in their in¬ 
terests, especially as women, by not being represented, it must be 
considered whether women, as. women, have no grievances — 
whether the law, and those practices which law can reach, treat 
women in every respect as favorably as men. Well, sir, is that the 
ease ? As to education, for example, we continually hear it said 
that the education of mothers is the most important part of the ed¬ 
ucation of the country, because they educate the men. Is as much 
importance really attached to it ? Are there many fathers who care 
as much, or are willing to expend as much, for the good education 
of their daughters as of their sons ? Where are the universities, 
where the public schools, where the schools of any high description 
for th£m ? [Hear.] 

If it is said that girls are best educated at home, where are the 
training schools for governesses ? What has become of the endow 
raents which the bounty of our forefathers established for the in¬ 
struction, not of boys alone, but of boys and girls indiscriminate¬ 
ly ? I am informed by one of the highest authorities on the sub¬ 
ject that, in the majority of the deeds of endorfment, the provision 
was for education generally, and not especially for boys. One 
great endowment — Christ’s Hospital — was designated expressly 
for both. That establishment maintains and educates one thousand 
one hundred boys, and exactly twenty-six girls. 

Then when they have attained womanhood, how does it fare with 
the large and increasing portion of the sex, who, though sprung from 
the educated classes, have not inherited a provision; and, not hav¬ 
ing obtained one by marriage, or disdaining to marry merely for a 
provision, depend on their exertions for support? Hardly any 
decent educated occupation, save one, is open to them. They are 
either governesses, or nothing. 

A fact has quite recently occurred which is worth commemorat¬ 
ing. A young lady, Miss Garrett, from no pressure of necessity, 
but from an honorable desire to find scope for her activity in allevi¬ 
ating the sufferings of her fellow-creatures, applied herself to the 
study of medicine. Having duly qualified herself, she, with an 
energy and perseverance which cannot be too highly praised, 
knockf il successively at every one of the doors through which, in 


SPEECH BY JOHN STUART MILL. 


13 


this country, a student can pass into medical practice. Having 
found every other door fast shut, she at last discovered one which 
had been accidentally left ajar. The Society of Apothecaries, it 
appears, had forgotten to shut, out those whom they never thought 
would attempt to come in; and through that narrow entry this 
young lady obtained admission into the medical profession. But 
so objectionable did it appear to this learned body that women 
should be permitted to be the medical attendants, even of women, 
that the narrow wicket which Miss Garrett found open has been 
closed after her, and no second Miss Garrett is to be suffered to 
pass through it. [Cheers.] 

Sir, this is instar omnium. As soon as ever women become 
capable of successfully competing with men in any career, if it be 
lucrative and honorable, it is closed to them. A short time ago 
women could be associates of the Royal Academy ; but they were 
so distinguishing themselves, they were taking so honorable a rank 
in their art, that this privilege, too, has been taken from them. 
That is the kind of care taken of women by the men who so faith¬ 
fully represent them [Cheers.] That is our treatment of un¬ 
married women ; and now about the married. 

They, it may be said, are not directly concerned in the amend¬ 
ment which I have moved, but it concerns many who have been mar¬ 
ried as well as others who will be so. By the common law of 
England, every thing that a woman has belongs absolutely to her 
husband ; he may tear it all away from her, may spend the last 
penny of it in debauchery, leaving her to maintain by her labor 
both herself and her children; and if, by heroic exertion, she earns 
enough to put by any thing for their future support, unless she is 
judicially separated from him, he can pounce upon her savings, 
and leave her penniless; and such cases are of very common occur¬ 
rence. If we were besotted enough to think such things right, 
there would be more excuse for us ; but we know better. The 
richer classes have found a way of exempting their own daughters 
from this iniquitous state of the law. By the contrivance of mar¬ 
riage settlements, they can make in each case a private law for 
themselves, and they always do. Why do we not provide that 
justice for the daughters of the poor which we take gcod care shall 
be done to our own daughters ? Why is not what is done in e* T ery 
particular case that we personally care for made the general law of 
the land ? — that a poor man’s child, whose parents could not af¬ 
ford the expense of a settlement, may be able to retain any little 
property which may devolve on her, and may have a voice in the 
disposal of her own earnings, often the best and only reliable part 


14 


SUFFRAGE FOU WO. Q Q 2 Q Q41 849 5 

of the sustenance of. the family ? [Hear.] I am sometimes asked 
what practical grievance I propose to remedy by enabling women 
to vote. I propose, for one thing, to remedy this. I have given 
these few instances to prove that woiyen are not the petted favorites 
of society which some people seem to imagine; that they have not 
that abundance, that superfluity of influence, which is ascribed to 
them, and are not sufficiently represented by the representation of 
those who have never cared to do in their behalf so obvious an act 
of justice. Sir, grievances of less magnitude than the laws of the 
property of married women, when affecting persons and classes less 
inured to passive endurance, have provoked revolutions. 

We ought not to take advantage of the security which we feel 
against any such danger in the present case to refuse to a limited 
class of women that small amount of participation in the enactment 
and the improvement of our laws which this motion solicits for them, 
and which would enable the general feelings of women to be heard 
in this house through a few female representatives. We ought not 
to deny to them what we are going to accord to everybody else : a 
right to be consulted; the common chance of placing in the great 
council of the nation a few organs of their sentiments; of having 
what every petty trade or profession has — a few members of the 
legislature, with a special call to stand up for their interests, and 
direct attention to the mode in which those interests are affected by 
the law, or by any changes in it. No more is asked by this motion ; 
and when the time comes, as it is certarn to come, when this will be 
conceded, I feel the firmest conviction that you will never repent of 
the concession. I move, sir, that the word “man” be omitted, 
and the word “ person ” inserted in its place. [Cheers.] 

There were 73 votes for Mr. Mill’s amendment, 196 against it 
—it was lost, therefore, by 123 votes. 

“TheTribune” correspondent says, “ Some of the greatest intel¬ 
lects in Parliament, and nearly all the young men on whom the 
future of England depends, made an honorable record on this great 
question. Among them were Hughes, Stansfield, Taylor, Lord 
Amberley, Oliphant, Mr. Denman, Mr. Fawcett, the O’Donoghue, 
and the sturdy old Homan Catholic, Sir George Bowyer.” 


